Fix My World
by Akatsuki-no-Hikari
Summary: KakuHidan. AU. Of course nobody really knows what is on wounded children's minds, especially some as complexed as these. Friendships based on healing wounds in exclusion of everything else last longer than anything material and physical boundaries.


**Fix My World**

I was eight when I first met him. In this room at the hospital the staff was desperately trying to make part of something else than this washed-white place that smelled like disinfectant and illness, the only room in the entire children care wing that was painted with bright rich colours and shapes of all sizes.

I was sitting down in a corner, biting off my nails until they bled. It was the only thing I could do to hurt myself and therefore please my god, without seriously putting my life in jeopardy or someone else's; after trying to slid my wrists with a stolen scalpel and attacking an elderly nurse, the doctors wouldn't let me close to anything sharp or potentially harmful, not even the books for the children laying atop the little tables, for I could use the pages to give myself papercuts. "_Damn them for being so thoughtful,_" was the only thought racing through my mind as I bit off another part of one of my nails and spat it aside.

It's as I was ready to abuse the damaged skin around my fingernail that I saw him. Tall and imposing, with the presence of a volcano waiting in a shallow sleep, about to destroy anything if the time is right. But it seemed like the fire within had long died out, and would never spring to life ever again. I could see it in his vivid neon-green eyes, his hunched-over posture, the way he let himself drop in a chair without caring for the world around him one bit. I could see it in his dark skin sewn with hundreds of black stitches, winding on his arms and legs, two of the nearly fully healed scars transfiguring his features by pulling the corners of his mouth upwards.

I don't know why I was attracted to him like that. He was just one of these heathen bastards living amongst the tight walls of the cities covering the face of the Earth. He wasn't much different from all the other kids in the hospital. Except that he was dead, when his body wasn't. That must have been it. We Jashinists are surrounded by death during our entire life, but even for us, meeting with someone who had been by its side, close enough to let a part of themselves die, was a rare occurrence, almost unheard of.

I got up from my shadowed corner and walked up to him, making sure not to draw any of the nurses' attention. It wasn't everyday I would talk to another kid without the motive of inflicting them pain at the back of my mind.

I sat down in front of him on one of those yellow plastic chairs so easy to throw at other kids or use as a shield against nurses equipped with syringes filled with sedative. He didn't look up, didn't even seem to acknowledge that someone else had moved close to him. Ignoring me –whether it was intentional or not–, instead of setting me off, only captivated me more.

"Hey, dumbass," I called as I sat down before him, trying to no avail to meet with his neon-green gaze, which remained without any results. My vain hopes of getting something out of this walking –or rather sitting and moping– corpse dried up as quickly as the small beads of blood escaping from my scorched fingers: slowly.

I didn't stop one second calling him. Every name in the book passed without getting any reaction from him. I tried insulting him through picking on his dark messy-looking hair, his unworldly-coloured eyes, even his dark skin, but nothing did, until I finally touched a subject that was fresh in his mind.

"Hey, Scarface, look at m–"

I couldn't even finish that he held me up by the front of my hospital gown, his fist ready to collide with my jaw at any moment. I could read the fury in his eyes, the anger radiate from him in a dark aura. At one point, I was sure I was going to die. The kid was twice my size, and had mustered a strength I had never seen only out of rage. I had awakened a sleeping volcano, and was about to feel the rush of all its suppressed fury.

I closed my eyes and waited for the blow to reach me, but nothing came. I waited some more, but still silence and void were the only things that hit me. I crack-opened an eye to look at him, to know what was holding him back from beating me down to the floor.

The retained fire was choking, asphyxiated and drowning into the tears running down the tanned boy's cheeks. For the first time in what surely was my entire –yet still quite short– life, I regretted imposing pain onto a living being. No one should be allowed to hit so low a creature already lying on the floor. Not even I, not even my God.

He let go of me as his body started shaking, sobs driving through him like earth quakes shake mountains. He slumped back down in the plastic chair that protested under his weight and hid his face in his arms, folded on top of the table set between us. He looked crushed, broken. An olympian mount dynamited by the most human of all emotions; pain. Sadness. Sorrow. Grief.

I didn't know what to do. I remained frozen, staring at him for a minute. Thankfully he kept his weeping low, and didn't draw attention. Luckily for us, otherwise we might not have become so close in the next few years...

I looked all around for any form of help from nurses of the other ill kids in the room, but found nothing but the blank reflection of implanted happiness in the heart of children about to cross the doors of death. I sighed and pulled my chair next to his, hesitating before petting his back lightly.

"Don't cry, you idiot," I said, rather softly dare I say. "Crying is for sissies."

The dark-haired heathen didn't even look up at me. How infuriating. I was trying to help after I had screwed up, and he couldn't even give a little of his own. I frowned and shook his shoulder, finally getting his attention, his tear-filled green eyes falling into mine. "Stop crying, you wuss," I said, my tone harsher than it had been a moment before. "Whatever the hell happened, you don't need to fucking cry like a bitch over it. Life goes on, stupid."

"_Maybe I over did it_" was a thought that struck me when his watery stare turned into a fiery glare. But it didn't make me back down an inch. I glared back, holding my own against this kid as twice my height and size muscle-wise.

We kept silent for a couple minutes, tension palpable in the air, the world closing around us. He then sighed and looked down at the table, lacing his fingers over its surface. He told me what had happened to him, pointing to each of his scars as he resumed the car crash he had been trapped in in a few words I had to strained my ears to hear as he whispered the story of his parents' and baby sister's death. Surprisingly, I didn't sneer, didn't laugh, didn't anything. Only listened.

Once he was done, he brought himself back in his silent shell, his neon-green eyes on his fingers, blinking now and again. Without even knowing why I started blurting out my own story, why an albino child like me wasn't allowed out of the building until every aspect of me was thoroughly examined by competent medical staff and being sure that the mentally disturbed boy I was wouldn't try mutilating himself to death for my religion again like I had done a few days ago, my reason for being confined within the white walls and halls.

He didn't laugh either. Quite surprising I thought at this point. Usually heathens would criticise my people's beliefs, call us masochists and sadists with an excuse to maim ourselves and others, psychopaths and madmen. But he didn't. He didn't like it, didn't accept it, but didn't defame it either. And for that, I was grateful. I didn't need a wreck of a human being to tell me how wrong my religion was to society's eyes.

We kept each other's company for what was left of our stay in the child ward of the hospital, insulting and hitting the other repeatedly as a form of emotion discharge. It was hell and heaven all at once; having to bare with him every day was both enjoyable and unpleasant. But I wouldn't have traded his friendship for anything else, it seemed.

His wounds unexpectedly healed faster than my own, which caused him to leave me back in the washed-out walled fortress. He wasn't heading to some place better than this one, that I knew; now living without a family, he was off to some orphanage where kids would make fun of the scars marking his body, where they would pick on him until he would crush their nose flat into their skull. Heathens only learn the hard way, I taught him.

I was biting my nails to crimson blood when he left, waving to him with my other hand weakly as some unbelieving asshole clad in a dark suit pulled him away to his car. He reached the vehicle and turned around to me. The only thing I could notice from that distance was the perpetual grin the scars on his face gave me as he waved back. Then he hopped into the car and disappeared out of my sight through the window of the brightly-coloured room.

I grinned nearly as widely as his scars as I noticed flames arising from the road he had taken, columns of smoke reaching for the sky when the car he was in crashed. He was coming back.

~Owari~

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**DISCLAIMER: I do not own the characters of this... well, pointless story, actually**

Enjoy the angstiness, and don't forget to review! ^^


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